1. The Field of the Invention
This disclosure relates generally to a method for regularly supplying bank customers with cleaned and sanitized cylinders that are used to transport money and other paper items between the customer and the teller stations, as well as cleaning the tubing through which the cylinders travel.
2. Description of Related Art
Drive up banking is a very popular innovation in the banking business. It allows customers the convenience of being able to perform banking transactions with tellers inside the bank without having to leave their automobiles. The transfer of money, deposit slips, identification, and other items necessary to the transaction are transported between the customer and the bank in a closable plastic cylinder that is transported back and forth in a pneumatic tube that communicates with a teller station inside the bank and a drive-up banking station.
One problem with this system is that many people handle these cylinders in the course of a day, and generally do it in conjunction with handling money, one of the dirtiest materials people regularly handle. As a result, they are repositories for all the various microbes that the individuals who handle them may be carrying. Added to this fact is that money, which is another vector for the transmission of microbes, is being handled simultaneously with the cylinders. As a result, the cylinders can be a hotbed of microbes and potential transmitter of disease, similar to grocery store shopping cart handles.
Thus, it would be highly desirable if the drive up banking cylinders and the tube that transmits them could be regularly cleaned and disinfected to reduce their ability to transmit microbes and diseases. From a marketing and customer relations point of view, it would also be good to be able to communicate to a bank's customers that the bank's cylinders are regularly cleaned and disinfected.